Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Power Max Characters in Real Life

On RPG bulletin board I never heard of there is a discussion of too powerful real life characters. A role playing game is balanced by not letting characters become too powereful and flexible. Here are 2 character descriptions.

GM: "This is getting a little ridiculous. You maxed out your skill in Bluff, Oratory, Instruction, Drawing, Musical Instrument: Drums, Nuclear Physics, Quantum Theory ... and Lockpicking? I like your character concept, but they don't give a Nobel Prize in lockpicking."

Richard Feyman

Okay, so I decided you guys could all be really high-point characters and all for this player vs. player game, and even powergame and min-max, but you really screwed it up. I didn't expect you to put 99% of your points in Henchmen. How the hell did this guy survive until this point? He has no Wealth score, no skills, etc. Even the skills your background mentions have ranks of zero. How does a character with an "Uncreative" disadvantage and no skill ranks in Art or Writing make a living like that? I'm also pretty sure it's unrealistic to have that many ranks in Oration with negative ranks in every other social skill. All those psychological disadvantages you're stacking are a little powergamerish, but they'll cripple you as being a threat to the other three players. What, you're banking on lots of lucky rolls and being underestimated? Yeah, right.

If Writers were Recognized

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Piano Playing Cat



There is another video of a cat watching Nora the piano playing cat. Sylar left a comment on cats playing the piano.
So this is what it's come to, these millions of years of evolution, warfare, community-building, women dying in childbirth with hope because their children might achieve more.
A video on the Internet of a cat watching a video of a cat on the Internet.

This is the pinnacle of human achievement. And, truth be told, I'm okay with that. Because these cats are SO CUTE.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Edward Burtynsky Photography

Here is a slide show of Edward Burtynsky's photography. The slideshow comes from a Slate article on him. I previously discussed his work as it was depicted in the movie Manufactured Landscapes on my film blog.

Odd Ad

The problem with this car ad is that any one who has played slot racers knows that mere act of cornnering too fast can cause a slot car to spin off the track.

Beer Tent Radio

I was having a hanking for bagpipe music and so I came across a radio station on ShoutCast called Beer Tent Radio. It is a station for unhypenated canadians otherwise known as Scottish Canadians. Look the photo on their site. In Shoutcast stations list all their various genres, this stations lists it genres as "Celtic Music - Scottish, Irish, traditional, folk, rock, punk, military - lots of bagpipes".